Finding the drama from coast to coast

The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards:They saw more than 170 performances across the country – which left them exhausted but exhilarated. So what did our judges think of the year as a whole?

THE THREE JUDGES for this year’s Irish Times

Theatre Awards have been deliberating for five hours already when I meet them, but they seem more exhilarated than exhausted after an intensely busy year. They have seen more than 170 performances since last January, assessing new Irish theatre productions that have opened around the country.

The resounding feeling all three judges express is the “enormous privilege it has been to be there as artists really got stuck in, producing work under the difficult economic circumstances that were presented this year”, as Jack Gilligan, former arts officer with Dublin City Council, explains. “The entire theatre sector needs to be applauded for the way it has come together to support each other, for the way it has managed to survive.”

The question of funding and resources dominates the judges’ discussion of the state of Irish theatre in 2010, whether this was through an obvious paring back in production values in smaller shows or through the financial pressure to get shows on stage quickly, as the journalist and dramaturge Christine Madden explains.

“The way in which the funding mechanisms have shifted has presented the theatre community with a big problem,” she says. “The switch to project funding by the Arts Council means that companies do not have the resources for development and are under pressure to produce even if the show is not ready. Also, the new funding deadlines have seriously affected both when and how people can present work. We saw how people were especially hurting in the first half of the year, and the theatres were empty. Then in the second half of the year there was so much work that companies were fighting each other for audiences . . .

“I am amazed that we have a sector at all under these circumstances. And that is before we consider the wider status of the sector, where there is no value attributed to the arts alone. It is seen as something that the country can use to promote heritage, but it is our heritage, and that goes beyond its ability to just make money for us.”

One of the positive trends that the judges observed throughout the year was that audiences remained strong despite the economic circumstances. “In the larger venues,” says the artist Bernadette Madden, “there appeared to be a very committed audience base. But with the smaller companies and in the regions we saw a big problem with PR, and it is a terrible feeling, sitting in a theatre with only three or four other people.”

The PR problem was something that affected the judges first-hand too, as Madden, who has sat on the awards panel for two years, explains. “Despite the big reminder that we made at the start of the year, we were getting invitations at such short notice that we just could not make everything. And we want to; that is our job: to assess the broader scale of things happening around the country.”

So what of the work that they did see this year? The shortlist makes for stimulating diversity of established and independent theatre companies. There is large-scale work nominated from well-funded companies such as the Abbey Theatre and Rough Magic, as well as chamber-type work from tiny theatres such as Bewley’s Cafe Theate and Anu Productions, whose World’s End Lane, which is nominated for two awards this year, had an audience capacity of just three.

Regrettably, the Gate Theatre chose to be excluded from the awards again. “We would have loved to have had the opportunity to include the hard work of the actors, directors and designers who worked there for our consideration,” says Gilligan.

Trends in the productions, as Bernadette Madden sums up, included food – “there was food everywhere: a little bribe for the audience” – and music, which was used “not only to add to a production but as an integral part of the way a story was being told”.

The “navel-gazing monologue” continued to dominate new writing. Christine Madden, who has worked as a literary manager for Rough Magic and at the Abbey Theatre, says “people seem to think it is an easy and cheap way to develop their craft, but it is a fallacy to think that the monologue is a way of saving money. Having a second actor if you need it would be a much more efficient way of making a good play.” Another strange development was writers “aspiring to be relevant just by tacking on contemporary commentary”. As Bernadette Madden explains, “Often the most pertinent work was the work that approached things more obliquely.” Theatre in Belfast, they all agreed, was extremely strong this year, and Bernadette Madden laments the fact that “they rarely tour below the Border, and that is a pity. I think there would be a big audience for it”.

As for opera, the judges are dismayed by the way the funding crisis has affected opera. “Two opera companies have gone in the North, one in the south, and all of the companies were already operating reduced programmes this year,” Gilligan says. “The sad fact is that there will be even less next year.” “Opera is an expensive medium,” says Bernadette Madden, “and despite the fact that there is an audience and an appetite for it, it seems that no one is willing to help pay for it any more.”

But there were good news stories, too: the reopening of the Belltable, in Limerick; the impressive renovation of Waterford’s Theatre Royal; the opening of the Grand Canal Theatre, in Dublin; and some really excellent work that the judges have struggled to hone down to a shortlist. But Gilligan finishes with a note of warning: “The danger is that people will think that, because people have managed to put work out there without proper resourses, the arts don’t need to be funded properly, and I think that would be a mistake.” Bernadette Madden agrees. “Creativity doesn’t cost money, but getting it out there does.”

The awards will be presented in Dublin on February 27th